THE READER DEMONSTRATES THE BANALITY OF EVIL AS WELL AS JUSTICE
Fifteen-year-old Michael Berg (played by heartthrob David Kross), suddenly afflicted by scarlet fever one day in 1958, is assisted home by thirty-six-year-old Hannah Schmitz (played by Kate Winslet), a collector of fares on a tram in Berlin (though much filming also takes place in other parts of Germany). After a three-month recuperation, Michael goes to her flat to thank her for her kindness and soon ends up in bed with her, a summertime affair in which he reads the great novels of literature to her before or sometimes after sex. Then one day she abruptly vacates the apartment with no forwarding address. The next time he sees her, in 1966, she is a defendant before a Berlin court on the charge of sending 300 prisoners to their deaths as an SS guard at Auschwitz. He is present at the trial on a field trip as a law student at the University of Heidelberg. In open court, she admits that she wrote reports identifying which prisoners to send to their death even though Michael knows that she is illiterate, but he is afraid to say so out of fear that the affair will come to light. Although sentenced to life imprisonment, in 1986 she is about to be paroled as a model prisoner when prison officials contact Michael (played as an adult by Ralph Fiennes), who has been sending her taped readings from novels, to implore him to assist in her transition to life outside of prison. To build emotional suspense, the scene shifts back and forth in time to highlight events in their lives, including Michael’s marriage, divorce, and efforts to be a good father. Based on the 1995 semibiographical novel Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink, currently Law Professor at Humboldt University, there is a tragic climax that will tug at the emotions of filmviewers, who are thereby implicitly urged to reconsider the meaning of justice, even as regards former Nazis, a theme that packs considerable poignancy in contemporary Germany. MH